


Inspired

by startwithsparks



Series: MMOM 2013 [4]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Drinking, Masturbation, Other, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwithsparks/pseuds/startwithsparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire wakes up to find a mess from the previous night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inspired

Mornings had always been difficult for him, even without the cloying sickness that pervaded his body or the fog that settled heavy over his mind after a night of drinking. Sunlight streaked through the dingy windows of his small apartment, bright enough to make Grantaire consider hauling himself out of bed to close the curtains. But his body refused. He sunk deeper into his bed, pulling the threadbare covers over his head with a groan instead.

After so many years of over-indulgence it was a wonder he hadn't discovered some way to rid himself of this early morning misery, and a greater wonder that he hadn't abandoned the indulgence altogether. But he and drink were old friends now and, like so many old friends, he had grown as fond of the deep, dark lows as he was of the dramatic highs it brought him. What would his love affair with drink be without the heartbreak of the morning, finding his lover had abandoned him, like all lovers do, in his most dire hour of need? Grantaire would have it no other way. What would he even do with himself if he woke some shining morning and found his wits completely about him and the memory of the past night's revelry as fresh in his mind as the moment he opened his eyes?

As it was, his recollection of the evening before was vague at best. There was wine, there was absinthe, there was food aplenty and for that alone everyone was in bright spirits. Even the divine archangel, their Uriel-made-flesh, Enjolras saw fit to bless them with a smile. How simple that smile but it filled Grantaire with a stronger intoxication than any drink had ever given him. And yet those smiles were saved for his choirs, not some fallen wretch like Grantaire. He could only long for him from afar, that face haunting him every time he closed his eyes.

That was when the wine started pouring liberally down his throat. With a bit of charcoal in one hand and a bottle in the other, a candle dimly flickering on the table in front of him, Grantaire had sequestered himself in a corner to watch and long to be a part of that joy and hope and whatever else these revolutionaries sang about when they got good and drunk. Oh, to be those little lambs again... Grantaire would give anything to never know the lion's jaws.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and rolled to his back, the sound of crumpling parchment giving him pause. While the threat of sunlight had him grasping for the darkness beneath his blankets, he was loath to consider what state his apartment was in if he had paper strewn across his bed. But it would be a worse fate to roll over on some potential masterpiece than it would be to find himself stunned by morning light. And so, reluctantly, he braced himself for the sight that awaited him and pushed the blankets down from his face.

What greeted him looked like a heavy wind had blown through his apartment. The chair at his table lay overturned on its back, clothes were strewn across his floor, a broken bottle lying in pieces on the floor near the table, while papers lay scattered across the floor and on the bed - some rumpled, some torn, yet others that seemed pristine and untouched. What fit of madness came upon him in the early hours of the morning? What demon seized control of his body and threw him like a tempest about his quarters? Grantaire reached for the nearest paper, a ripped fragment of a much larger image, a graceful bare leg tempting him from the page. He remembered the painstaking detail he put into those delicately arched toes, the curve of an ankle, the whisper of a thigh that disappeared into nothing at the jagged edge of the paper. Laying it aside, he picked up another - this one an elegant neck that traveled down to deep pools of the collarbone, pale curls falling loose against the nape of the neck and severe cheeks.

The others, he knew, would be much the same as these. He had innumerable sketches of his _saint de l'Cour des miracles_ lying around in various states of completion, some had even made it onto canvas, on the rare occasion that Grantaire didn't drink away every sou that came his way and could afford such things as paint and canvas. He wasn't an apprentice anymore, he couldn't depend on a master's scraps and leavings to make his art. Less often he managed to sell one of his beloved paintings, to some bourgeois sort who wanted something scandalous in their drawing room or library. There were a handful of young, rich families with a nude Apollo or Sébastien with radiant golden curls in their homes now, a point that Grantaire often considered when Enjolras was off on one of his tirades.

Yet here they lay, his darlings, destroyed by some madman's drunken terror; never to be elevated to such ecstatic existence as oil on canvas. Grantaire shuffled through the ruined pages, trying to see if anything had survived his onslaught if there was even one piece in redeemable condition. Unfortunately, those that remained in one piece were ruined in far more disgraceful ways. To Grantaire's shame, he had expended himself across some of the pages the night before, leaving them discolored and clinging hopelessly to one another. He tried in vain to peel them apart, but the pages tore, just like the other pages lying in shreds around him. Now the crumpled heaps of paper made sense to him as well because, in his frustration, all he wanted to do was ball up what was in his hand and toss it aside with the rest.

Instead, he dropped back down in bed, rolling onto his side. So many sketches ruined in a fit of crazed desire, with no other channel to pour his desires into. It was reckless of him, and yet in his drunken ardor, it must have made all the sense in the world. But perhaps it wasn't such a sorry thing after all, because with this pile of kindling lying around him, an opportunity appeared: every side of Enjolras, every fantasy that had already been put to paper, could now be recreated, and if Grantaire found himself abusing them again, there was always more paper and charcoal in the world that needed his fingertips just as much as those bitter indulgences did.


End file.
